There’s a lot of trash-talking going on about the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, chiefly among Republicans in Congress and some at the state level whose hatred of the law to expand health care coverage borders on irrational.

And it’s getting louder as Oct. 1 approaches. That’s the day Kentuckians and other Americans seeking health coverage will be able to visit the online health care benefit exchanges and shop for affordable health coverage that meets their needs.

People really need to get the truth about the Affordable Care Act because it offers some enormous benefits, particularly in Kentucky. Sound information is available now and now is the time to take advantage of it.

Kentucky’s new health benefit exchange already is online with facts — facts, not political attacks, GOP spin or extremist claims — at kynect.ky.gov.

It offers a friendly, colorful website that walks people through the basics. Try it out.

And here in Louisville, a series of public forums will be held on the health reform law and what it means for you as a consumer, starting Monday.

The forums are open to the public. They are being coordinated by the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, a local civil rights organization, and funded through a grant from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, a non-partisan research and policy organization dedicated to improving the health of Kentuckians.

If you are among the many Kentuckians who already have health coverage through an employer, you will see little difference — except the Affordable Care Act requires your insurance company to cover more services, expand coverage and will bar it from canceling you for a serious or costly illness.

But if you are among the 640,000 people in Kentucky who have no health coverage, expect some dramatic changes for the better.

Health care will be available at more affordable rates. Financial help is available for the many hard-working Kentuckians with low-wage jobs who don’t get health care at work and can’t afford it.

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And Medicaid is expanding in 2014 from a limited program for the most impoverished and disabled to cover more “working poor” — people who earn 138 percent or less of the federal poverty level. That would make a single adult earning about $15,900 a year or a family of four earning $32,500 eligible for health care coverage through Medicaid.

In Kentucky, that means immediate coverage and access to health care for about 308,000 people.

This newspaper has documented countless cases of people who lie awake at night worried about getting sick because they have no health coverage. It has described cases of folks with serious conditions, such as heart disease, high blood pressure or diabetes, skipping doctor’s visits or prescription medication because they have no money to pay even as their health deteriorates.

It has documented people crushed by thousands of dollars in debt after an accident or an illness became so acute they or a loved one were forced to go to the hospital but had no health insurance to pay the bill.

If you are among these people — or care that they exist, in significant numbers in Kentucky —you owe it to yourself to educate yourself about health care reform.

And it’s clear the public still has a lot to learn about the 2010 law that is one of the signature accomplishments of the administration of President Barack Obama.

A poll earlier this year by the Kaiser Family Foundation, an excellent source of accurate information and current research on health care, found four out of 10 Americans don’t realize the Affordable Care Act is law, including 12 percent who believe it was repealed by Congress.

(No wonder, with House Republicans constantly trying and failing to repeal it. They’re up to 40, for anyone who’s still counting.)

About half of the public say they don’t have enough information about it to know how it will affect them and that rate rises among low-income people or those with no health coverage — those who stand to benefit the most, the Kaiser poll found.

It’s important for everyone to learn as much as they can about this new law and its advantages.

The Republican attacks on health reform are going to get louder and angrier.

Chief among the attackers is Kentucky’s senior Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Louisville Republican who takes to the Senate floor every chance he gets to denounce Obamacare, despite the benefits it would bring to the impoverished and disease-plagued people of his state.

Kentucky has some of the worst health in the nation, including high rates of diabetes, heart and vascular disease and cancer. It has the nation’s highest death rate of cancer. Health reform offers Kentucky a chance to turn that around and for people to finally get the care they need.

Don’t be deceived by political attacks and partisan rhetoric. Find out the truth for yourself.